1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates in general to the transmission of data in a data stream over a telecommunications medium such as the Internet and, more particularly to the placement of recipients of that streaming data into identifiable groups by space or time, relative to the streaming data, to avoid congestion of users making demands for the streaming data substantially at the same time or at the same place in the data transmission.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Streaming data transmitted through the Internet, is a well-known technique for sending data expected to be received in a continuous form. Such data, for example, may be the current prices at the New York Stock Exchange, or video data such as a replay of a sport highlight or a fashion show. While the resources which may be allocated for transmitting the data may be adequate in many cases, at other times, the resources for sending the data may be inadequate for the task relative to the number of recipients demanding the data at substantially the same time or at the same place in the data base or data store. The consequence of any such inadequate resource allocation will be congestion and disappointed recipients who demand the data but are placed low or out of the queue because there are an insufficient number of servers, for example, to retrieve the data from the store and place it on the Internet for transmission to the recipients.
Other entities which receive demands, as described above, placing an overload on the resources used to transmit the streaming data might supply music or even static web pages. Any such demand, coming from the recipient end of the transmission medium, cannot be predicted until the demands for data are made. At the same time, the recipient expects the demand to be instantly satisfied by immediate connection to the data and to promptly begin enjoying the show or the web pages or the music or whatever may be represented or contained in the data stream.
Accordingly, there is a need for managing demands or requests made at substantially the same time or at the same location in the data stream, which may be beyond the system capability for supplying the information within the time expected and which reduces this peak load and shifts it over the space of the data transmission while preserving the impression of immediate satisfaction for each information recipient.